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I Met My SAPE Pen Pal !
Many thanks to Diana Schoenherr for emailing this article and to the Schoenherr's, Breyman's, and Ann Gorman for granting permission to reprint it along with the your photos.
OVERDUE
RENDEZVOUS
Pen pals
meet nine years after first letter
By ANN GORMAN, CORRESPONDENT
Illinois
State Journal Register
PETERSBURG - To Molly Schoenherr, strolling with her friend Olena Breyman through Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site last Saturday seemed like nothing short of a miracle.
"It's unbelievable," Molly said as she took Olena through the village's reconstructed log cabins and explained what life was like for the pioneers who lived there.
Molly,
whose family lives at Lake Petersburg, is studying deaf education
at MacMurray College in Jacksonville. She began writing Olena, or
Helen as the Schoenherrs call her, when she was 10 years old. Molly's
mother, Diana, read about the Soviet-American Pen Pal Exchange in
a Girl Scout newsletter and signed her up.
Olena, 19, is from the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. She is studying this year at North Park University in Chicago after winning a grant from a U.S.-sponsored program.
Olena said she vividly remembers the day in 1994 when her father brought her an envelope from the post office and inside was a letter and picture of Molly.
"I'm not sure I had a clear notion of where the USA was, but I knew it was somewhere very far, and that people never got letters from there," Olena said. "Even if it were a letter from another planet, I couldn't have been more surprised."
Olena knew little English then, so she wrote her letters in Russian, then translated them into English with the help of her mother.
"It wasn't easy, but I was so excited about writing to Molly that it didn't really matter," Olena said. "I can imagine how much patience it took for Molly to understand what I was trying to say."
Initially, the girls sent their notes via the postal service, but that sometimes was frustrating, they said. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, mail would get lost or take months to be delivered.
"Once my family got e-mail, it became easier and more reliable than the regular mail," Molly said.
Over the years, the teenagers discussed their homelands, cultures, schools and family activities. They discovered they both enjoyed the water, studying and traveling. They also found they have different tastes in music and movies.
"One of (Olena's) favorite movies was 'Titanic,' and I didn't like it at all," Molly said.
The pen pals have swapped pictures, gifts and souvenirs as well. Classic literature that couldn't be purchased in Ukraine, such as "To Kill A Mockingbird" and "The Diary of Anne Frank," was delivered to the Breymans, while a model of a Soviet airplane was sent to Molly's brother, Peter.
Olena said one particular card made a lasting impression on her.
"It had a red envelope and a bright-colored postcard with Mickey Mouse," Olena said. "A postcard with vivid colors and a nice picture on it was something I had never seen before."
The long-distance
relationship actually has grown into a family affair. Peter and
Olena's brother, Misha, both 12 and active in karate, 
have
begun writing to one another. So have the girls' mothers.
Diana said the correspondence "was instigated by two sets of parents who wanted their children to know each other the way that we were not allowed to when growing up."
There have been poignant moments between the families. When the Breymans' dog, Bim, was hit by a car and died, the Schoenherrs said they felt terrible. The Breymans, meanwhile, expressed deep concern for Molly's family and the United States during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Olena said she was amazed to find out she'd be attending school in Chicago, and her parents were relieved to know that she'd be just a few hours from her pen pal family.
"The program covers schools throughout the whole U.S. It's just a miracle that I have been sent here," she said.
The young women - who could pass for sisters - admitted they were nervous prior to seeing each other for the first time at the train station in Springfield. However, after five or 10 minutes at the Schoenherrs' house, Olena said, "I felt like I was at home."
Olena said her bond with Molly influenced her decision to pursue a career in international relations.
"(Our) correspondence has given me a broader look at the world around me, and in a way, it's made me the person I am now and brought me to where I am now," Olena said. "We have really nice people in my country ... I just want them to have what they deserve."
Here are two letters from U.S. SAPE participants who traveled abroad to meet their SAPE penpals. The second story was also described in "The Newton Kansan" newspaper on October 4, 1993. A transcript of that article appears after the second letter.
October 18, 1994
Dear SAPE,
Hello and my greetings to you. My name is Joe Gosz and I am presently 21 years of age and a student in technical college. I am enrolled in police science and my goal and ambition is to become a police officer or private investigator. Several years ago, I learned about SAPE from some literature which I received from the Embassy of the USSR on how to obtain a penfriend in the Soviet Union. I subsequently contacted SAPE about obtaining a penfriend and received the name and address of a young woman from the Republic of Belarus. We have been in correspondence with each other for well over four years now.
During my senior year of high school (1991-92), I had the wonderful opportunity to study in the Soviet Union for eleven months through the student program AFS Intercultural. I had the opportunity while I was in the Soviet Union to meet my penfriend from Belarus for the first time, the very friend whom I met through SAPE. I must say with all honesty that it is a very memorable experience to meet a penfriend for the very first time! Through our letters we had become very good friends and I had also become close friends with her family.
Since that time, I have also sought more penfriends in the former Soviet Union through SAPE. More specifically, I have penfriends in Russia and also the Ukraine through SAPE. Through my experiences, I have found that I have learned a great deal about nations previously misunderstood by Americans due in part by the feelings of the Cold War. Obviously, the world is now a different place with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but the opportunity for understanding is there. SAPE offers such an opportunity.
I would encourage students or anyone interested in learning more about the former USSR and making a long-distance friend that SAPE offers a very viable option. It takes some patience though as the postal system in the former USSR is in a poor state and mail can move very slowly at times. Once you make that contact though, it can be very rewarding and add a very interesting feature to your life. Based on my own personal experiences, I would recommend SAPE to anyone interested in making a friend in Russia or other republics of the former Soviet Union.
Sincerely,
Joe Gosz
Black Creek, Wisconsin, U.S.A
October 21, 1994
Dear SAPE,
In September of 1992 I received the name and address of a man in the Ukraine from SAPE. I have corresponded with him ever since. In August, 1993, my wife and I met him in Kiev, Ukraine. Since we were with a tour group we could not go to his city so he traveled six hours by train to meet us in Kiev. He spent the day with us and our tour group. He is 54 years old, lives alone and said that I was his best friend and this was the happiest day of his life. Meeting him has further deepened our friendship and we have continued to correspond regularly since that meeting.
Sincerely yours,
James Rinner
Newton, Kansas, U.S.A.
Road To
Understanding:
Newton Man Travels To Ukraine To Meet His Pen Pal
(The Newton Kansan - Monday, October 4, 1993 - by Bill Wilson)
Jim Rinner of Newton would be the first person to admit the best moments in life come at unexpected times. The retired amateur musician saw a long-distance mail relationship with a Ukrainian man quickly mushroom into a face-to-face friendship. The two men met in Kiev in August.
| "It started when a woman wrote to the Wichita Eagle about establishing better relations with people in the Soviet Union," Rinner said. "You could write to this address in New York and get information on pen pals - whether they were male or female, age, whether they understood English - from each of the Soviet republics." |  Jim Rinner (right) and Sasha Taranenko (center) visit with the aid of an interpretor (left) |
Rinner and his wife, Esther, specifically wanted a pen pal from the Ukraine, where Esther's ancestors lived. They got a name - Alexander "Sasha" Taranenko - and the relationship began. "I wrote him right away and in a month I had an answer," Rinner said. "We've been corresponding for about a year now. Sasha is a Baptist and an educated man, trained as an engineer. He's a deeply religious man, though, and he fell out of favor because of that. The Communists made him work at the lowest job possible, a (pipe) fitter. Because of all that, I never thought I'd meet him."
But in August, the Rinners embarked on a three-week tour of the Soviet republics. During the trip, they wanted to meet Sasha. "In the spring, when it appeared we were going to make the trip we told Sasha we were coming to the Ukraine," Rinner said. "We wanted him to come to Kiev if he could and meet us." So the Rinners set out on their trip, after helping Sasha with the expense of the trip.
"We went with a Canadian travel agency," Rinner said. Of our tour group, only four were citizens of the United States." On Aug. 21, the Rinners were in a Kiev hotel when Sasha arrived. "Early on that morning he called our room," Rinner said. "Esther answered and it was pretty obvious from her reaction it was him. So, I went down to the lobby and walked the opposite direction from him. He yelled out, though, and I went to him and we threw our arms around each other."
The struggling worker immediately took off his watch and gave it to Rinner. "Actually, I wanted to refuse the gift," Rinner said. "I didn't need a watch. But I was afraid of offending him, so I took it." The two men got along well, despite what Rinner called a lack of things in common. "I'm an amateur musician, for example, and music really isn't a part of Sasha's life," Rinner said. "We got along fine," he said. "He spoke some English, but we had to do a lot of our talking through an interpreter, a member of our group."
The Rinners were impressed with the Ukraine. "It is decidedly anti-Russian," Rinner said. "It looked better than a lot of places we visited. It's more affluent, by comparison, more stable. It's a lot like Kansas and I think that's probably why a lot of Ukrainians immigrated to Kansas.
More letters are in the future for Rinner and his penpal. "I'd like for him to be able to visit over here," Rinner said. "He'd never have the money to come over here, though. He rode six hours on a train to meet me. I guess that means he wanted to meet me pretty badly."
SAPE, P.O. Box 319, Monroe, CT 06468-0319, USA